More Than It Doesn't
by LondonBelow
Summary: Roger returns home, Mark and Collins in tow, to bury his mother. [challenge 9 entry]
1. Chapter 1

The was originally written for speedrent and now I'm entering it in Challenge 9 at Challenge Central. Why? Because I'm hopelessly competitive!

**Disclaimer: I don't own RENT, Bombay Sapphire, New Jersey, etc.**

There was no holiday in mid-January, but that had never before stopped the Bohemians. Nothing stopped the Bohemians. There was always money enough for a little vodka and a pack of cigs, and from there, well, it was only ten minutes to a party, the cold, dark loft filled with laughter and "punkin' white boys falling across each other like a fuckin' bunch of penguins".

This particular eve, it was a Bombay Sapphire bottle circulating. Mark was staring intently at it and muttering something about "dancing light pixies". "You're sure that was marijuana?" Roger asked.

Collins shrugged. "I'm not seein' any pixies," he said, shaking his head. "You want?"

"Uh, no. Not with--"

"SPEAK!"

Roger and Collins sat up straight and glanced at one another. "Did you hear the phone ring?"

"No."

"Shit, how wasted are we?"

The message began recording: "Hello?" It was a woman's voice, elderly and worn. Roger turned towards the phone. "Hello? I don't know if this is the right number, but I'm looking for--" she enunciated the name "Roger Davis. I'm looking for my--"

Roger leapt over the couch and picked up the telephone, "Hello, Nana. Yes, this is Roger."

Collins glanced at Mark and mouthed 'Nana?', but Mark was far too busy shaking the Sapphire bottle to notice.

Meanwhile, Roger had sobered considerably. "Yes, I'm still living in New York… No, I hadn't-- oh, Jesus. She-- she did?… Shit… No, I'm sorry, Nana, I didn't-- no, I don't." Despite himself, Roger smiled, "No, Nana, I have not forgotten everything you ever taught me, I just… I mean… wow. All right. Are you okay?… Okay. Yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. Good-bye."

He hung up the phone and flopped back onto the couch. Before Collins could ask what had happened, Roger snatched the Bombay Sapphire from a displeased Mark ("'S my bottle, Roggie, my-- tell him, Collins! Give it back t'me…") and gulped.

---

Neither Mark nor Collins thought anything of the telephone call the previous evening--Mark especially, as he knew it only by the message on the answerphone. Ten o'clock found Mark recovered from his hangover enough to brave a piece of toast. Collins, who had been high rather than drunk, glanced around the loft once more. "Is Roger out?" he asked. "I haven't seen him all day."

Mark shrugged and nibbled a corner off his toast. "Don't know," he muttered.

Collins sighed, half-laughing at his hungover friend, and crossed to Roger's room. He knocked. "Rog, you in there?" he called. If Roger was hung over, that would not help him any. After a few seconds of silence, Collins knocked again, louder, and called, "Roger!"

The door flew open. "I'm here," Roger said. "You don't need to yell." There were smudges under his eyes, and his voice was a little more raw than a night of heavy drinking merited.

Considerably more worrying, for Collins, was the half-packed bag on the bed. "Where're you going?" he asked, pointing.

"Um… I just… need to go," Roger concluded lamely. "Look, it's nothing. I'll be back, I... it's just for the weekend."

Hearing this, Mark abandoned his toast and joined Collins, unintentionally blocking Roger's doorway. "Where?" he asked.

Roger made a noise something like a sigh, a dissatisfied gurgling of spit deep in his throat. "Guys, it's been two years since Santa Fe," he said. "I'm just going home for the weekend, to visit. There's been a death in the family." The words were rote, stale, something he had heard and recounted only because he knew no other words to say. They were empty, conveying only meaning but no sentiment.

Collins replied with a similar statement: "I'm sorry." It was stale. The denotation of the words was not his meaning, they were simply the sounds one made in such a situation.

Roger scoffed. "My mom's dead," he said. He sniffed, shuddering, then looked at the ground and began to laugh. "Jesus Christ. I mean, all those years I said I'd call her back, she'd be there… all that time I was busy being a brat, now I gotta go home and… help bury my mother. Jesus." Collins tried to hug him, but he shook his head. "It's okay. I just can't believe… Either of you want to come?" Roger asked, suddenly loud, looking up. "You can meet my grandmother."

"The Nazi?" Mark asked. He had heard stories about Roger's grandmother, the little old German who kept her husband's service revolver inside an old hat and still occasionally believed herself to be in the Reich. She carried toffees in her purse, but Roger had no idea what they tasted like. At Christmas she would smack Roger's head and insult him for his liberalism and inability to speak German.

"No, that's Grandma Davis, this is the one who hit me with the frying pan," Roger answered, not missing a beat.

Collins began to laugh. "Christ, man," he said. "A frying pan?" Mark had taken on a sad, disbelieving look. "That explains more than it doesn't…"

"Wha-- not in the head," Roger replied, annoyed.

"Where?"

"I've really never told you this story? Huh. On the butt. Where else do you get spanked?"

Collins was still laughing as he shook his head. "I've never been spanked with a frying pan. Even in my worst moments…"

With a shrug, Mark explained, "The worst thing I did was get a C in math."

Roger knew he would have to tell this story. His friends would never stand for silence. "All right," he said. "Well, when I was nine I started a fire on a toilet seat at school. And I was living with Nana then, and she, y'know."

Mark's mouth had fallen open. "She just started hitting you?" he asked. "Just, like… picked up the pan and…?"

"You want the details?" Roger looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. "Mark… that's a little kinky. You want the details of my childhood spankings? But if it'll play your fantasies better, no, she had me bend over the couch and it hurt. I didn't start any more fires, though." He had done other things. Roger Davis was not the easiest of students. He dropped live mice down girls' dresses, carved obscenities into the walls, and insisted that the discovery of the Americas by the Spanish was 'a mistake that defied G-d'. "Anyway, I'm going to visit this weekend and to help with it, with the ceremony, and if you guys want to come…"

Mark and Collins exchanged glances. "I got nothin' I can't cancel," Collins said. "Do you want us there?"

TO BE CONTINUED!


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own RENT, Jonathan Larson does.**

Roger stood in the snow.

There were too many confessions.

He had never been a good Catholic, never cared for Catholicism, yet as he stood in the glistening snow outside of his grandmother's apartment building, he felt that one confession was certainly enough for the next two weeks. Mark and Collins had been kind given the circumstances, but Roger knew he would never live this down. Already he heard them snickering "Jersey Boy" behind his back--not out loud, but he knew they were thinking it.

Now he had another set of confessions. What was there to say? I have HIV. Mark winced when Roger said AIDS, so until he had AIDS, Roger would say only that he had HIV. That was the opening. That would lead to other confessions: _I used heroin. Yes, it is possible that I caught the disease from the needles, but it's more likely I caught it from my dealer's semen when I just couldn't scrounge up enough for a hit._

_Sure, I did a few things right, Nana. I found a nice Catholic girl. We didn't mean to have Catholic babies, that's thanks to the folks in the Trojan factory. We didn't want it, we knew it was wrong, but we didn't kill it, Nana. It wasn't abortion. Well, not induced, anyway. It was just a slimy, bloody mess on the shower floor._

Roger shivered, from the cold he told himself. He preferred to avoid self-pity, but some of the more prominent facts of his life had been painful. There was no reason to tell her.

He stepped forward and pressed the buzzer. In a moment a distorted voice asked through the speaker, "Yes, who is it?"

"Roger," Roger said.

"Hang on, I'll buzz you up."

A metallic **zzz** sound admitted Roger. He passed through a metal gate that took a hard yank to open, pounded up a flight of stairs, then admitted himself to the building. It was a short ride to fifth floor, and all the while Roger pictured her face, how angry she would be as he admitted how he had lived his life. He heard her weathered voice rejecting him. At the very least, she would look away and say, "At least your mother doesn't have to hear this."

The next thing Roger knew, he was standing before the door, his heart pounding, hands jammed into his pockets as waited for his grandmother to open the door. He did nothing to improve his appearance, not from carelessness but nervousness.

The door opened. In his mind, Roger imagined his grandmother already knowing of his addiction and illness. He expected her to take one look and slam the door in his face. Instead, she smiled. "Roger!" She stood on the tips of her toes to hug him.

"Hey, Nana." Roger took his hands out of his pockets and bore most of her weight. He stooped to make the hug easier.

She was slightly diminutive, half an inch shy of five feet, with powdery, soft skin that Roger feared would tear if touched. Her hair was thinning and white as an owl, but her blue eyes held some hint of youth. "Come in," she said, once the hug was ended. "Sit down; we'll talk."

The apartment was small, but fitting for a woman living alone. Or, perhaps not completely alone. "Samson!" Roger cried. The cat had changed since last the two met: he was old, fat, and only gave a lazy half-whining mewl in greeting. Roger scratched Samson's ears affectionately. "Hey, buddy." Samson licked his hand.

"Well, that's more approval than he gives most," Nana said, apparently satisfied. "Join him, then, and eat something. You look like a skeleton." There was disgust in the phrase.

Roger frowned. He had gained weight. After withdrawal, he really had looked like a skeleton: outlined ribs, caved belly, veins bulging on his arms. Mark would look at him, shudder, and push over his breakfast. "You have it," he would say, "I'm not hungry."

But she could not possibly know that, so Roger sat at the kitchen table, grabbed a cookie and bit into it. "Mmm…" The cookie disappeared.

When he left home, Roger was sixteen, maybe seventeen, he wasn't certain, but he knew that Nana had treated him like a ten-year-old at times and he had hated it. She did the same now, handing him a mug of cocoa with marshmallows bobbing inside, but Roger, rather than chafe, said, "Thank you," and drank.

"I missed you," she said, settling herself opposite him. "The things you read in the newspaper about that city…"

"Nana, you can't trust the_ Inquirer_," Roger said.

"I know, I know. None of you boys trust newspapers, Donald Trump and that lot. But I've seen on the television what goes on. I watch Buzzline, you know. Well, I used to. They've sold out."

Roger nearly spat out his cocoa. "They… what?" he asked. Mark had been thrilled when Buzzline came under new management. They sought him out for a job, asked to him to provide a segment on societal issues. It was respectable and the money was great.

"They used to be honest," Nana said. "Now what they show… it's a little edited, very careful what they say, don't want to step on toes."

"It used to be sensationalism," Roger told her. "My friend worked for them."

"Really?"

"Mmhmm."

"I'd like to meet this friend."

"He came up with me," Roger said. "For the… to help." _To help me._

Nana nodded. "That's good of him," she said. "So, we have a friend. Are there any nice girls you know? He knows?"

Roger laughed. Trust his grandmother to think of that. "No," he said. "Not for me. My wife passed on a few years ago." He and Mimi had never formally married, but he knew there would be no recovery from this. She was the last, the only, his true love. And that was cheapened when he called her his girlfriend.

Nana covered her grandson's hand. She didn't say a word, just sat with him for a moment in silence, neither of them moving. Roger had always loved his grandmother, but it was in that moment that he began to understand her.

He swallowed hard. "How did Mom die?" he asked.

"Peacefully," Nana said.

"Sleeping?"

"You might say. She… well… Roger, I don't know if you know this, but your mother took anti-depressants."

Roger nodded. "I know." He had known for a long time. A part of him knew when he saw the bottle, even before he researched the name. It had taken a while for him to understand that from the time he was eight to shortly after his tenth birthday, Mommy was not in the hospital for people with sick bodies.

He remembered the apartment differently for a moment. It was bigger. There was a blanket on the couch, a blue, fleecy blanket, and a teddy bear named Ralph. He was sitting on the floor, building a building with Legos. His clothes were too big in some places and too short in others. Now the building was finished; he set it next to his others and drove his trucks through the city. They had places to go. This one worked construction. Today he was bringing his son to work.

"Roger? Do you understand?" Nana asked.

He nodded. "Jesus," he said. His mother killed herself.

Before Roger left, Nana asked, "Would you sing for her one last time, Roger? You know your mother loved to hear you sing."

He was too angry to answer.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Reviews would be appreciated. Please?


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: RENT is the brainchild of Jonathan Larson. I'm just borrowing his characters with every respect intended.**

Roger crouched by the clay squirrel. "Hey, Badger," he said, lifted the figure and drew the key from the ground below it. He replaced the squirrel and unlocked the door. "Come on," he told his friends, and stepped inside.

The house presented the perfect air of suburbia: modest but large enough for a family: Mom, Dad, a couple of kids. It did not stand out, but was different enough to be noticed. His parents purchased it shortly after their wedding day and moved in to start a family. As he stepped into the dusty house, Roger imagined them, young, as they were in the photographs, happy, hopeful.

"You grew up here?" Mark asked.

"Yes," Roger said. "Here, then in Nana's place, then here again. And now it's…" _Empty. Mine._ The will left everything to Roger: some money, the property and her possessions.

Collins turned on the lights in the living room. "Hey," he said, "there's you." It was Roger in a wooden picture frame, a six-year-old Roger with disheveled hair and a huge grin, in _gi_.

Roger knew he should blush, but lacked the urge. He shut the door and locked it. _You always lock the door, Roger. Safety first._ "Yeah, there are pictures…" It was a stupid comment, but he needed to break the silence. Collins was now observing a family snapshot, Roger with his parents at the beach. "You don't have to do that."

"I enjoy it."

"There's albums if you wanna look…" Roger motioned vaguely.

Mark decided to take action. "I'll see if there's any food," he said. "Okay, Roger? Where's the kitchen?"

Roger led Mark down the corridor, to the kitchen in which he had learned to cook. They found crackers and snacks in the cupboards, fruits, dairy and vegetables in the refrigerator and meat in the freezer. This was not the home of a woman ready to die.

"What do you want?" Mark asked.

"You choose. I don't care," Roger mumbled. "I'm sorry…" he said quickly, when Mark's face softened into its hurt impression of tears. "I don't… I just… Sorry, Mark."

"It's okay."_ What the fuck, Cohen? He's trying._

The kitchen was an awkward place for Roger. It was the sight of his first memory: the night he, at six years, wandered out of bed for a forgotten reason and saw his parents screwing on the table. They had been fighting earlier that night, and a dish was broken.

Roger blurted, "Let's have macaroni and cheese."

Mark looked up at him, surprised. He had expected to choose something and have Roger pretend to eat, pretend to appreciate, then offer to do the dishes so no one would see how little he had eaten. "Seriously?" he asked. "You'll eat it?"

"Yeah," Roger said, and without a thought brought his fingers up to touch the points of the compass over his heart.

TO BE CONTINUED!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own RENT, Bombay Sapphire, New Jersey, or anything else.**

"There's something I need to tell you guys."

Roger was lying on his bedroom floor. His hopeful parents had bought a bunkbed for his room before he was even born; he had surrendered the bunkbed to Mark and Collins. He had insisted they take it. _I've slept enough nights in it. Please. You're guests._ The term had made him itch under his skin: guests, in his home.

"What?" Mark asked sleepily from the top bunk.

Roger folded his hands beneath his head. Mark's macaroni and cheese was clinging to his ribs. "My mom killed herself." _And even now, she's asking me favors. She's crushed my chest so I can't breathe, and somehow she wants me to sing._

He had needed to say it, needed to hear the words that ached like stones in his gut. Using the bathroom that night, he had wondered if this was where she did it, here, in the tub where his rubber ducks and plastic ships still rested, where her toothbrush stood damp in the plastic cup.

He swallowed, against his will emitting a tiny whimper. Roger's temperature was soaring, and the tears in his eyes burning as he blinked them back. The room looked so different in moonlight than he remembered it in predawn, his mother shaking him awake. _"Roger, wake up. Roger, honey, come on, I need you to get up."_

_"What?" He blinked. His eyes cried out for sleep. "What's going on?" He was thirteen and growing like taffy at a county fair, stretched this way and that until he only knew exhaustion and hunger._

_"We need to go, honey. To mass."_

_Mass? Roger hated mass. Mass was for Easter and Christmas, not four o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. "Mom, we can't."_

_But she insisted, a frantic note in her voice, "Roger, please. Please get up, I need you to come with me…"_

_"Okay." He pushed back the covers. "Okay, Mom, I'm up."_

_She combed his hair with water and made him wear nice clothes, and led him by the hand up the stairs to the church. "Here," she said, inside. "Sit here and pray." Obedient for want of will, he fell into the pew and bent his head towards clasped hands, murmuring prayers. Something made him fervent._

_They left after the five o'clock mass and his mother's confession. Roger never learned why. _

Collins joined Roger on the floor, cross-legged. "Sorry, man," he said.

Roger pushed himself into sitting position, practically leaving his sleeping bag behind. He heard Mark swear lightly as he monkeyed his way off the top bunk. "I just thought you should know," Roger said. Collins hugged him. "Thanks."

The trio awoke stiff and sore, on the floor in an awkward, tangled but very comfortable embrace.

TO BE CONTINUED

Please review? Please?


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I don't own RENT, Bombay Sapphire, New Jersey, 'Amazing Grace' or anything else.**

---

It was a small area in the park, near a wall so heavily covered with vines it hardly appeared a wall at all. There were bamboo trees nearby, a weeping willow and a few tiny passion flowers blooming in sheer defiance of the cold. Folding chairs had been arranged, a headstone erected for Grace Stroud, beloved daughter, mother. The grave was already filled.

Nana sat in a chair in the front row, her back straight, legs crossed at the ankle. She wore black and a hat with a veil, in solemn, untouchable mourning.

Roger stood awkwardly before a tall, green-eyed man who otherwise did not resemble him. He had never been certain what to say to his father since the day Roger and Grace moved back into the house, and Andrew wasn't there. At last he settled on, "Dad," and a solemn handshake.

"I'm… uh… sorry about this," Andrew said. He continued the handshake slightly too long and ended it too swiftly. "Your mother… she was doing well," he said. "For a long time. Real well."

"Oh." Was he supposed to agree to that? How well could she have been doing? Roger knew, now, that he should have heard the weariness in her voice, the fragility:_ Roger. This is your mother… Roger, where are you?_

He should have been there. The ache was back, a punch to the gut. He had always been there._ "Mommy?" Roger is eleven years old. He hasn't been long back in the room with the bunkbeds and the picture of a sailboat. "How many pills do you need?"_

_She stands at the bathroom sink, the most beautiful woman he will ever say, blond curls just like his and he wishes his could be long like his mother's, which she will sometimes let him touch now that he's getting to be a young man, not a boy anymore. "Just two, sweetheart."_

_"You took three," he says._

_"Did? Whoops. Must have forgotten. Well, that's all right. You'll remember for me, won't you, honey?"_

_He nods solemnly. He will remember. _

Roger had made a promise. She drew it out of him during their first week back in the house. She wanted him excited to be coming home, and bought him new pajamas, a pair from the department store. They were the first fitting clothes he had worn in years, and the idea of wearing the sky on flannel jammies thrilled him to no end.

_"Mom, Mommy, are you awake?"_

_She sits in her bed, a book closed on her lap, long white fingers folded neatly. She stares straight ahead with an open smile, watching something he can not see and unable to see him at all. "Mommy!" he insists, grabbing her hand._

_"What?" She looks around, startled, and laughs when her eyes light on him. "Oh, Roger. It's you."_

_Roger is not amused. He doesn't like it here anymore. It's too big and Ralph, his teddy, is afraid of falling down the stairs. And they shouldn't live here without Daddy. He tells her all of this and, in childish oblivion, does not see the look of pain on her face._

_"It's not too big in here," she says, and lifts him into her bed. He snuggles against her. It's definitely not. "Roger, honey, you can't always do this," she says, tugging gently at his hair. "This is just for tonight, okay? Then you need to sleep in your own bed like a big boy."_

_"Don't wanna be a big boy," he complains. "I don't like it here. There's monsters in the closet and on the top bunk and under the bottom bunk and there's bad stuff under the sink. Ralph isn't happy. He's scared all the time. Why can't we live with Nana?" Roger doesn't behave like a ten-year-old, not when he's frightened, and he doesn't care. Grace is worried, but then she supposes her worry is natural. What mother doesn't worry?_

_"Because…" Grace hugs her son. "Because we live here."_

_Roger knows that. "But _why_?" he whines. "I liked Nana's place."_

_"We can still visit Nana," Grace promises, "but you have to behave."_

_Roger protests, "I am behaving. Behaving just means acting. I'm acting."_

_"You, Roger Michael Davis, are acting like a baby," Grace retorts. Her son is suddenly aware of the thumb in his mouth, which he gives a stubborn suck. "Now listen to me. We can visit Nana, but we live here now, just like we used to--except without Daddy," she adds quickly. "And because Daddy isn't here, you're the only man in the house. So you need to be a big boy for me and not a baby, okay?"_

_Roger still wants to be a baby._

_"This is a big responsibility, Roger, but I think you can handle it. This is a big, special task, a quest." She knows her son is reading The Lord of the Rings and, because he struggles with it, believes it to be the greatest work of literature in the history of writing. "It means always being there for your mother and behaving like an adult whenever you can. Will you do that, Roger? Will you promise to always be there?"_

_"I promise."_

_"Good boy." She cuddles him a little. "Now, come on, we could both do with cheering up. Why don't you sing us something, Roger?"_

_"No," he says, shaking his head and laughing. He's being a lovable rogue now, and knows it. "I don't want to," he giggles._

_"Yes, you do. You always do. Come on, Roger, you know you love showing off your pretty little voice," she teases. "You'll always sing for me."_

And, as always, she was right.

_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound  
That saved a wretch like me.  
I once was lost, but now am found;  
Was blind, but now I see._

He had not sung a hymn in a long time. His mother only took him to church sporadically, usually at strange hours, and then she sat him in the pews and went to confession. The song was one Roger knew simply for its tune, and he almost enjoyed singing. The long, low vowels filled his lungs, raising his chest.

For the first time since learning about his mother's suicide, Roger did not feel totally miserable. He did not feel helpless or responsible. He felt a surge of power.

He ended the song with "I shall possess, within the veil/A life of joy and peace." He wanted to leave her something, but the coffin was buried already, deep in the ground, and Roger had nothing to leave. He had only his voice, which could not be given but only shared a little, for a time. His lungs and throat ached beautifully.

"'Night, Mom," he whispered, then turned and carried himself to the back row, where he sat between Collins and Mark.

Roger did not realize he was crying until Collins wrapped him in half a hug and Mark took his hand.

Concluding remarks were given over the lonely grave. The boys left before anyone could try to console Roger. They walked to the car Joanne had been nervous to lend and drove back towards the loft, back home.

"Thank you," Roger choked. His throat was shredded.

Collins and Mark exchanged a glance, and Collins shrugged.

"Well, that explained more than it didn't."

THE END!


End file.
